'Dominica, tell me what you've learned about Jamal,' Rashan interrupted. Rashan always used my real name. I didn't care for it much.
If you can mentally take a deep breath, I sucked in a cerebral lungful. 'It was a hit.'
'Go on,' Rashan said.
'You know about the skinning and crucifixion already. Jamal had been squeezed. The strange thing was, there were no traces of the ritual on him or at the scene. It was like the hitter scrubbed the place when he was done.'
Rashan frowned. 'If Jamal was squeezed, it must have been a sorcerer. That suggests another outfit.'
I nodded.
'Tell me what you know about the ritual.'
'That's what I'm saying, boss, the place was clean.'
'And yet, you were able to learn something.'
It's hard to play coy with a Sumerian sorcerer. 'Yeah,' I said, 'the hitter used an artifact in the ritual. It left a mark that wasn't cleaned up. I was able to get a taste of the juice and find out a little about it.' I told him about the soul jar and what I'd learned about it from my divination spell.
Rashan steepled his fingers and tapped them against his black, neatly trimmed goatee. 'Veronique Saint- Germaine. I remember her. She was the strongest sorcerer in the Old South. There were more famous voodoo queens in New Orleans during that period, but only because Saint-Germaine didn't work the tourists from New York, Boston and Paris.'
'Based on the New Orleans angle and an old photograph I got with my spell, I thought there might be a connection to Papa Danwe.'
'Indeed there is. Papa Danwe was one of Saint-Germaine's inner circle. He'd come to New Orleans with her from Haiti, after the slave revolt. He murdered her in 1854.'
'Knew she was murdered, didn't know Papa Danwe did it.'
Rashan shrugged. 'It was something everyone knew and no one could prove. Not that anyone would have done anything about it anyway. Survival of the fittest.'
'So I figure, we can put the soul jar at the scene of Jamal's murder. We can connect Papa Danwe to the jar's previous owner. He's got the juice, so he had the means and opportunity.'
'Your theory is tenuous and circumstantial at best,' Rashan said. I started to protest, but he waved me off. 'That doesn't mean you're not right.'
'Yeah, but it doesn't make any sense. Jamal was good at what he did, but his talents were pretty much limited to tagging. I can't see how he had enough juice that the Haitian would get anything from squeezing him.'
Rashan shook his head. 'There are very few instances in which you would squeeze a sorcerer for power. Any sorcerer strong enough to do it wouldn't gain anything from doing it, just as you suggest. The usual exception is a group of sorcerers or coven that works together to squeeze a more powerful magician and divides the spoils amongst themselves. In any event, there are much easier ways to acquire power.' Rashan gestured expansively at the strip club. The club was a juice box, and like I said before, Rashan's lips were on the straw.
'Then what's the point of squeezing a guy? I guess I wouldn't call it common, exactly, but it does happen. Everyone knows about it.'
'You squeeze a guy not to procure power in the abstract. As you say, Jamal had precious little of that. You squeeze him to steal his specific power, his unique arcane talent and craft. You take another sorcerer's juice, it isn't like taking it from a tag or a line. It's his juice. You squeeze him to make it yours.'
This was all news to me. 'So, Jamal was a tagger. You're saying Papa Danwe squeezed him to steal his way of doing graffiti magic.'
Rashan nodded. 'There can be no other explanation.'
'But why? Jamal was good, okay, but he's not the only tagger in town. It seems like it'd be a lot easier to just recruit a guy, even if he needed a little training. Why take the risk of hitting a connected guy?'
'Two connected guys,' Rashan corrected, 'which is why I called you in. Jimmy Lee's body was found floating in a storm runoff this morning.'
I'd been expecting another body to turn up, but I hadn't been expecting it so soon. 'Damn,' I said. 'No skin?' Rashan nodded.
'I don't know this guy, boss. What was his thing? Another tagger?'
'No. Jimmy Lee was a warder-defensive magic. He designed protections, locks, alarms, minor defensive spells, that kind of thing.'
I arched my eyebrows. 'Important stuff?'
Rashan shook his head. 'No, in that respect, Jimmy Lee was rather like Jamal. A valuable asset, but not a critical one.'
'It's a pattern,' I said. 'Jamal was a tagger. He tapped and flowed juice on the outfit's territory. Jimmy Lee was a defensive guy. Put the two together. Papa Danwe is going after our defenses. He's making a move.'
'It is the beginning of a pattern, Dominica. Tragically I expect there will be more bodies, and with each one, more of the pattern will be revealed.'
'Both of the victims' names begin with J,' I suggested. 'Jamal's last name is James and Jimmy is short for James.'
Rashan just looked at me.
'Okay, but I'm on the right track, yeah? The first part, I mean. What other reason could there be to hit Jamal and Jimmy Lee, two guys with those specific talents?'
'The problem with your hypothesis is that it overestimates the importance of the deceased. I have a lot of taggers and warders in the outfit. As far as our operational security is concerned, they will not be missed. These were low-level guys. Jamal's tags weren't responsible for tapping a significant amount of juice. Jimmy Lee's wards were not protecting anything of great importance.'
'So it still doesn't make any sense.'
'Not yet. Truly, it's not a bad plan, in principle. If you could squeeze assets in critical positions, and if you could move quickly enough that your enemy couldn't react in time, it's not a bad way to initiate hostilities against a rival outfit.'
'But that's not what's happening here. Papa Danwe is hitting low-level guys. He doesn't seem to be in any big hurry about it, either. If I were doing it, I'd hit them all at once, or one right after the other, at least. I wouldn't take my time about it.'
'Just so. Which is why I suggested you have discovered only part of the pattern.'
'Okay, but whatever it is, the fact remains that Papa Danwe has given us time to react. So what's our play?'
'First, tell me about Jamal. I assume you've made an effort to contact him.'
'Yeah, but the Haitian is blocking me.' I told him about my efforts to reach Jamal, and my attempt the night before to summon his ghost from the Beyond.
'If Papa Danwe did, in fact, send those creatures to kill you, perhaps his plan is unfolding more quickly than we imagined.'
'Any idea what they were? You ever know the Haitian to use something like that before?'
Rashan shrugged. 'Just about every culture on earth, living or dead, has some kind of ghost dog or hellhound. In the north of England, they were called barghests, or town ghosts, and they were thought to stalk lone travelers at night. They are denizens of the Beyond, and for that reason they are usually associated with death and appear as minions or messengers of the underworld.'
'Well, yeah, I got that much from Wikipedia.'
Rashan arched his eyebrows. 'I'm sorry, Dominica, I am old but I am not a scholar. If you think it might aid you to know more about them, I encourage you to pursue it.'
'The point is, I haven't been able to contact Jamal, and it's pretty obvious Papa Danwe doesn't want me to. But what's the point of keeping Jamal quiet if the Haitian has to launch overt attacks against the outfit-against me-to do it?'
'It seems likely that Papa Danwe isn't aware that you've connected him to Jamal's murder. If he prevents you from contacting Jamal he keeps that connection hidden, from his point of view. And, after all, you have no real evidence that he was responsible for the attack on you.'
